Good things come to those who keep yelling at tech support over several days.
So after four separate calls to Verizon tech support, yesterday I finally got them to agree to waive the early termination fee and cancel my service on the grounds that they don't actually provide service to my neighborhood--even in my front yard, calls would drop, and in my apartment, I literally got "no service" half the time. The second person to whom I spoke tried to argue that because there was a tower a mile away and the signal was blocked by terrain, it was impossible to waive the fee--like it's MY fucking fault there's a hill. I demanded a supervisor on that one and she was more reasonable although I ended up having to call yet one more time to get it resolved. The moral of the story is: never let anyone pull any shit, when you are dealing with the freaking cell phone people.
Then today my brand new T-Mobile Razr v3GSM arrived--in HOT pink, not that sissy preppy pink that Verizon carries. I'm trying to figure out the interface; I've heard that the firmware is much better than Verizon's (which cripples the phone's Bluetooth capability) although so far I'm not too impressed with the address book, which doesn't seem to allow me to designate home, work, and mobile numbers for a single contact.
However, the phone does massively outperform my Verizon Razr in one crucial area: I get service in my apartment. One, two, sometimes even THREE bars! I was able to carry on a conversation with customer support to activate it from my living room! It even gets a signal in my office, which is amazing, given that Social Science is basically a big concrete bunker.
I took the 600 minutes MyFaves plan to start with--this will probably turn out to be unnecessary, since it's got unlimited nights and weekends plus unlimited calls to your five "MyFaves," but I wanted to make sure before dropping to the 300 MyFaves plan. I'll see how my bill breakdown looks next month.
...Good god, now I'm connected to Cingular instead of Einstein PCS and I have FIVE bars of service. MIRACULOUS.
Then today my brand new T-Mobile Razr v3GSM arrived--in HOT pink, not that sissy preppy pink that Verizon carries. I'm trying to figure out the interface; I've heard that the firmware is much better than Verizon's (which cripples the phone's Bluetooth capability) although so far I'm not too impressed with the address book, which doesn't seem to allow me to designate home, work, and mobile numbers for a single contact.
However, the phone does massively outperform my Verizon Razr in one crucial area: I get service in my apartment. One, two, sometimes even THREE bars! I was able to carry on a conversation with customer support to activate it from my living room! It even gets a signal in my office, which is amazing, given that Social Science is basically a big concrete bunker.
I took the 600 minutes MyFaves plan to start with--this will probably turn out to be unnecessary, since it's got unlimited nights and weekends plus unlimited calls to your five "MyFaves," but I wanted to make sure before dropping to the 300 MyFaves plan. I'll see how my bill breakdown looks next month.
...Good god, now I'm connected to Cingular instead of Einstein PCS and I have FIVE bars of service. MIRACULOUS.